Starting small

So it's time to get serious about all this. But I still plan to start small and do things right, just got to get moving.

Isn't this bug weird? It looks like he's wearing a gas mask. I caught him on the miniature rose bush in the back yard.

Before the rain today

It was mostly all bark and no bite. We got lots of rain and thunder, but nothing else all that serious. And we really needed the rain! Took this photo of the clouds over my house before the rain started pounding.

Bee-lieve it!

Captured this bee buzzing around a flower this afternoon. I used a "macro" lens, which allows me to get closer than I normally can with other lenses, as well as magnifying my subjects to life-size (or in this cropped version, larger than life-size). Took me about a dozen shots to get this one, but I like it.

Our untrip to the Fort Worth Zoo

We should have known better: Spring Break, coupled with half-price admission day, mixed with a bad economy and the trend to "staycation" ... it's a recipe for disaster. We made it to the entrance of the Fort Worth Zoo* but could not justify turning in. Where would we park? How would we be able to see monkeys among the hordes of people? So we postponed our sojourn to the zoo until a date uncertain. Instead, we ate our picnic lunches at Trinity Park, played at one of the playgrounds, rode the very cool mini train and called it a day. The monkeys (mine and the zoo's) will have to wait a bit.

*Today set an attendance record at the zoo: 23,000 visitors. Yikes!

Testing, 1-2-3

This is a test photo I took of my son while he was watching Cars. Wanted to see how high I could bump up the ISO level on my camera and still get a good image. "ISO" corresponds roughly to film speed before digital photography came along. The higher the ISO number, the more sensitive the film or digital sensor is to light. This shot was at ISO 800 and looks pretty clean to me!

Best thing about some of my "test" photos is that they are priceless because of the subject matter.

Applesauce

When times are tough, you can almost always count on applesauce (or a photo of a cute kid eating it) to cheer you up. Works for me!